How to Select Investment Managers and Evaluate Performance: A Guide for Pension Funds, Endowments, Foundations, and Trusts by Haight, G. Timothy, Ross, Glenn, Morrell, Stephen O. 1st edition (2007) Hardcover

by G. Timothy Haight

An informative guide to selecting and evaluating external investment professionals This book-one of the very few of its kind-is an invaluable aid to trustees of pension plans, endowments, and trusts who seek to chart and navigate courses for governing and overseeing the investment of the trillions of dollars under their care. It covers many aspects of this essential endeavor, including return measures, fixed income and duration, manager searches, committee meetings, and much more. G. Timothy Haight (Atherton, CA) is President of Menlo College in Silicon Valley. Stephen O. Morrell, PhD (Coral Springs, FL) is Professor at Andreas School of Business of Barry University. Glenn Ross (Baltimore, MD) is a Managing Director and cofounder of Archstone Portfolio Solutions.

Genres: Finance

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jeff Garrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

G. Timothy Haight, Stephen O. Morrell, and Glenn Ross, How to Select Investment Managers & Evaluate Performance: A Guide for Pension Funds, Endowments, and Trust contains a wealth of information for those who sit on the boards of foundations. As with Light’s work, this book covers the basics of investment strategy, however, this books goes into much greater detail. To fully appreciate this work requires more of an understanding of mathematics that I continue to possess thirty years after college. Generally the formulas are not complicated for one security, but when you started grouping securities together into a portfolio it becomes complicated. Evaluating portfolios require the ability to pull data from numerous sources and to run complex equations, something that’s really only manageable with computers. Such work is not generally done by individuals within a foundation board, but is supplied by the professionals who manage the funds. However, it is helpful for board members to understand how returns are measured (dollar weighted†verses “time weightedâ€Â) and risk evaluated (“standard deviation,†and “regression analysis,†etc). A basic knowledge into how such evaluations are made will allow board members to better understand what fund managers (or managers of fund managers) are saying when they present such data.

Haight, Morrell and Ross provide a more detailed treatment of how hedge funds and private equity funds (which are designed for use by “accredited investorsâ€Â) operate. However, even here such tactics are beyond the scope of the book and they only scratch the surface. The book also has several helpful chapters (which are not as technical as the rest of the book) on the make-up of an investment committee, the construction of an investment policy statement, the search process for an investment manager and how investment committee meetings should be conducted. I did feel that the last chapter on committee meetings was fairly broad and therefore not as helpful. However, as each foundation has different needs, I’m not sure how they could have improved the chapter (unless they provided me with an answer of how to better organize one of the meetings I regularly attend, but the book wasn’t written just for me).


This book is a useful resource. I see it being a long-term resource book (or a college textbook) that can be pulled off the shelf when one wants to delve deeper. Unfortunately, the work of Haight and colleagues came out before the 2008-9 market crash and does not have the insight gained from the market chaos of that period

[May Ling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: It is no better or worse than a series of books designed to approach multi-fund designed portfolio question. if you require a more mathematical treatment, this is not your book. If you require a less mathematical treatment, also not you r book.

The book is exactly what it says it iis, a guide on How to Select Managers and Evaluate Performance designed for Pension Funds, Endowments, Foundations, and Trusts. It will give you all the statistics that you need and all the common stuff you will need to calculate to look like everyone else in the industry. If you are not familiar with these things, then this book will seem like a 4 or a 5 to you. For that reason I could not rate it lower than a 3.

If you are trying to understand how to find the best Investment Managers, or how to truly understand which are good and which are not, this is not your book. This book is about quickly assessing across managers if you've got too many managers and most of them are trash. If you've got a bunch of great managers and you're trying to figure out how to construct, this isn't your book. If you're interested in whether you should care about a certain type of investment now, also not your book.